OK, here’s a cool thing for Christmas. Neil Gaiman talking about new apocalyptic poetry and its inspiration on him and with added Peter Capaldi reading The Magic Wood by Henry Treece. (Available for the next 29 days only).

@kevinwho
If he hadn’t been in the story, we could have focused on the true hero and villain
While I agree that Krasko is a problematic character — remember all the talk at the time of how he must be coming b […]

A Christmas Carol (various versions on rotation but more often than not the Muppets win out)
In The Bleak Midwinter (of A Midwinter’s Tale if you’re American. Much overlooked and a great little film)
Home Alone
Trading Places
Gremlins

I think I guess the owner of that little gem, which actually makes me think that you might be right and that we’ve been getting visited by some botskis of late. Which is kind of a compliment, I suppose….

And yes, that was true of the pretty flat progression of the BG show but we’re in a whole different world now. Unless you’re actually a soap opera then there’s no drama that doesn’t build up to something more than ‘wooo, it’s that utterly mediocre second-tier villain from the first episode’. In this day…[Read more]

It’s an interesting analogy and I think it’s definitely there but (and this feels oddly like something we’ve discussed on the Buffy threads) its kind of comparing apples and oranges. Who has not been ensemble show for a long time and I suspect that the way its mythos has panned out means that it never can be again.

In answer to your question, I think Who’s real strength is that it does something audacious every so often. It’s the episodes which push the envelope slightly that seem to get remembered. All of the ‘classic’ stories are atypical in some way or another. Genesis of the Daleks is…[Read more]

I just want to point out that I’m not railing against some kind of BBC amphibian agenda here. Just at seeing a quite promising Stranger Things/Solaris fusion squandering its potential in such a spectacular fashion….